I was interviewed about NML recently for the Ed Beat blog, which is run by a non-profit I used to work at, Learning Matters.

Here's the intro followed by a link to the rest of the article:

Last week, when John Merrow's post on technology in schools generated a long discussion in its comments section, we learned just how important this issue is to educators and students. This week we spoke with Hillary Kolos, who worked with Learning Matters from 2002-2005, and is now a graduate student in MIT's Comparative Media Studies program. She's a research assistant for a project we've mentioned here before-Project New Media Literacies-which is attempting to explore what media literacy means in the 21st Century, and how students-and their schools-can learn to do it well. Full article

This summer, I had the opportunity to attend the Games for Change Festival, an annual convening of academics, game developers, non-profits, and educators who are interested in using games to create social change. Over three days, I attended a game-making workshop, an expo of new social issue games, and panel discussions on topics ranging from funding to using games in schools.

The highlight of the festival for me though, was a short talk given by high schooler Kaelan Doyle Myerscough, who is an advisor for NYU's new Games for Learning Institute. In five minutes, she thoroughly impressed a packed room of adults and reminded us all how important it is to speak directly with young people about their thoughts and experiences with new media.

In her talk, Kaelan explains the importance of creating a sense of immersion when developing games. She also gives examples of games that are both fun to play and great learning experiences. (Here's a link to her talk.)

I asked Kaelan if she could expand on some of the ideas she brought up in her talk over email.

Here's what she had to say:

Can you explain how you became involved with the Games for Learning Institute?

Well, I am friends with Ken Perlin, who is heading up the Institute, and whenever he would come to Toronto for whatever reason we'd spend hours talking about pretty much everything. When I first met him I was working on a game with my friends, and we talked about that a lot. Eventually when it came time to put together the advisory board he asked if I wanted to be on it. At the time I was in grade 8, which was right in the demographic that they were looking at, and he thought it'd be good to have someone from that age group who was also knowledgeable about games and gaming. Of course I was thrilled, and I guess the rest is history.

Do you consider yourself a "gamer"?  What games do you like to play?

Yeah, I'd say I'm a gamer. Some of my friends play games more than me, and there are times when I hardly play games at all. But for the most part I tend to keep my Nintendo DS with me wherever I go, and I play games a lot just as part of my daily routine.  As for my favorite games, I nearly always have a Pokemon game (or two) in my aforementioned DS, and I've played through most of my Pokemon games about 5-10 times. Right now I'm playing Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates. I'm a huge fan of the NES as well, and I'm addicted to Tetris and Crystalis. Lastly, the Legend of Zelda games are really awesome, especially Ocarina of Time. Of course, that's just video games, but I won't get into analog games much because the list would be too long.

One Laptop per child (http://laptop.org/) is developed to provide children around the world with new affordable opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves.

Mulosayoo Kids

Photo by Daniel Drake

I recently moderated a blog discussion with Phillip Cunio for Mitchel Resnick's Teaching For Creative Learning class. Together we summarized NML white paper and came up with questions that we thought were relevant to concerns of Mitch's group, Life Long Kindergarten, in relation to education and specifically in response to the tool that they developed to encourage programming among children. Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create interactive stories and share it on the web. It is designed to help children (ages 8 and up) to develop 21st century learning skills.

A couple of weeks ago I discussed Son of Rambow in this space as an obvious, and exhilarating, example of young fans creating new media works out of their passion for existing ones. Nowadays we'd be calling this process fanfic, fanart, or fanvid, whether it appropriates content directly (mash-ups, sampling) or indirectly (reusing ideas or characters in newly created media). Often such works are undertaken as loving, or twisted, re-imaginings of favorite tropes. (An aside: my favorite movie mash-up these days, probably because the release of Quantum of Solace is around the corner, but also because it vividly illustrates how even "authorized" James Bond iterations/incarnations are themselves responses to all the others that preceded them, is here).



Set in the 1980s, Son of Rambow epitomizes the kind of backyard-filmmaking that has always existed and probably always will; the only thing that seems to change is the technology involved and the age of those who can therefore participate. (Image © 2008 by PARAMOUNT VANTAGE, a Division of PARAMOUNT PICTURES. All Rights Reserved.)

I've been thinking lately about identity play. I'm focused on this right now because of Project NML's collaboration with Project Zero's GoodPlay Project on an ethics casebook focusing on the five ethical categories GoodPlay outlines in its white paper. This month, we've been talking about identity. A recent brainstorm session got me thinking about the assumptions we (read: Americans) make about the relationship between the identities we take on and our sense of who we are.

I've been thinking a lot about Herman Melville's Moby-Dick lately, and not just arbitrarily. A big piece of my job here at NML is to head up development of a teacher's strategy guide for use in the high school English classroom. The guide emphasizes the new media literacy skill of appropriation--the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content--and uses Moby-Dick as the sample text and a theater adaptation by Ricardo Pitts-Wiley called Moby-Dick: Then and Now as an example of a contemporary appropriation and adaptation of the novel.

Before I came to NML, I had long lived among the multitudes who for many reasons--actually, for me it was mainly out of guilt and the heavy weight of cultural duty--keep a copy of Moby-Dick on a bookshelf with the really truly honest intention of getting through it some day. My guilt was compounded by my personal history as first an English major and then a student-writer in an MFA program. Every time I looked over at that fat little book sitting plumply on my bookshelf, I got just a little miserable all over again.  But then I thought, you know, it's a very long novel. And hard. And word on the street is that it's kind of...boring. But then I joined NML and started in on this teacher's guide and I figured, okay, it's time to end the shame. And I took a deep breath and I jumped in.